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Reforms and Integration
î Reforms and Integration
Dr. Alexandros Yannis
European Union Official, Brussels
Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, dear friends!
It is a great pleasure for me to be here today. I have been involved in EU and
UN efforts in the region for over a decade, I have seen violence and disaster with
my own eyes and I am very pleased to see here today such a transformed
situation. This is primarily your achievement. Congratulations.
But it is not only the region that has changed. The whole world around us
has changed over the last few years. Financial crisis, climate change, energy
security, the Arab Spring, cyber-security and so much else. We live in a radically
transformed world than the one we lived during the ethnic crisis here just a
decade ago.
What it has not changed though is the European commitment to this country
and the region. The historian Arnold J. Toynbee reflecting on the first World War
observed that what was known as the 'Easter question' was in fact a 'Western
question'. Today the situation is quite similar. As Jacques Rupnik states the
'Balkan question' remains more than ever a 'European question'.
The European Union Foreign policy was born in the Balkans and it is here
that we had to face one of our first biggest challenges. Ten years ago the EU got
involved in a joint effort with other partners, particularly the US, working
together with the leadership here to stop the escalating violence and to help to
broker an agreement and bring lasting solutions.
In the years following the Ohrid Agreement the local leadership assumed
responsibility in transforming the country to a stable and prosperous place and
the EU helped to do the rest with its political, diplomatic and financial support,
and with its military and police missions and experts and other assistance.
Ten years later, the situation is very different, and everybody should take
pride in it. In 2011, you enjoy candidate country status, one of the first countries
of the Western Balkans to receive this status.
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